Homily for the Sunday of the Prodigal Son in the Orthodox Church

 

Luke 15:11-32

            The themes of exile and return are prominent throughout the entire narrative of the Bible.  Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise.  The Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt until Moses led them back to the Promised Land.  The kingdoms of Israel and Judah went into exile in Assyria and Babylon, respectively, with only Judah returning home.  The Jews endured a kind of exile when the Romans occupied their land and longed for restoration through a new King David.  Our Lord provided the true restoration of a kingdom not of this world, leading all with faith in Him back to Paradise through His Cross and glorious resurrection.  The canon of the New Testament concludes with the Revelation or Apocalypse, which portrays the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the joyful fulfillment of all things in Him. 

 As we continue preparing for our Lenten journey, the Parable of the Prodigal Son reminds us that true repentance is a matter of returning home from self-imposed exile.  It shows us who God is and how we have all chosen to turn away from a loving relationship with Him due to our insistence on serving our own self-centered and foolish desires, no matter how miserable and weak they have made us.  The parable calls us never to fall into despair, no matter how depraved we have become, because we remain the beloved sons and daughters of a Father Who wants nothing more than for us to return from exile and embrace our true relationship with Him.

The younger son had done his best to reject his father completely, for he had treated him simply as a source of money for funding a decadent way of life that gratified his passions.  He did not relate to his father as a beloved person, but only as the source of his inheritance. That was essentially the same as wishing that his father was dead; it was the very worst insult that he could have given the old man.  The prodigal son rejected his identity as a beloved son so that he could live as an isolated individual who was free to indulge his passions in any way that he saw fit with no responsibilities toward anyone.  Once he burned through the cash, however, he faced the harsh realities of being a stranger in a strange land during a famine.  He sunk so low that he envied the food of the pigs he tended.  The Jews considered pigs unclean and this scene shows that he had repudiated not only his father, but all the blessings promised to the children of Abraham.     

In the midst of his misery, the young man finally came to himself and realized that he would be better off as a lowly servant in his father’s house, where there was bread to spare, than in some Gentile’s pig pen starving to death.  He recognized how he had broken his relationship with his father and no longer had any claim to be his son.  Reality had slapped him in the face to the point that he gained a new level of spiritual clarity, for he understood the shameful gravity of what he had done.  Then he began the long journey home in humility.  

That is when the young man got the greatest shock of his life.  In ways that contracted all the customs and sensibilities of that culture, the father ran out to hug and kiss the son who had so gravely insulted him.  The old man must have scanned the horizon every day in hope of his son’s return. Despite the son’s despicable behavior, the father did not view or treat him according to what he deserved.  He did not even consider receiving him as a servant, but said, “‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’” The party began, but the older son was offended by the injustice of the celebration, as he claimed to have always obeyed his father and was never given a party.  This fellow missed the point of the father’s joy, for “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”  He had returned from exile to the Promised Land and been restored as a descendant of Abraham.  It was simply obvious to the father that this was a time to celebrate. 

           The parable reminds us that our return from exile to the joy of our Lord’s Kingdom is not a reward for good behavior.  We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. (Rom. 3:23) Each of us is the prodigal son, for like him we have chosen to repudiate our identity as the children of God in order to live as anonymous, isolated individuals according to our own desires.  It does not matter what we have put before God, for if we have put love for anything before Him then we have rejected our vocation to know the great joy of becoming like our Lord in holiness. The passing pleasures the prodigal son sought were base and brought him into obvious misery, even as our first parents’ unrestrained desire for the forbidden fruit resulted in their expulsion from Paradise into our world of corruption.  His behavior was obviously shameful, but our habitual sins are equally dangerous, if not more so, due to their subtlety in turning us away from our calling to share more fully in the life of Christ.  That is especially the case if we distort the spiritual disciplines of Lent into opportunities to become more like the older brother in slavery to vainglory and self-righteous judgment by wanting a reward for our apparent virtues and condemning our neighbors for their failings.  He refused to enter into the celebration of the return from exile of a beloved child of God.  He referred to the prodigal as “this son of yours,” for he had become blind to his calling to love him as a brother.   We can easily do the same thing to our neighbors, thus shutting ourselves out of the joy of the Kingdom where, thanks be to God, none of us hopes to get what we deserve. 

 The father restored the prodigal son by clothing him in a fine robe, shoes, and a ring.    The young man had surely been half-naked in stinking, filthy rags during his journey home.  Adam and Eve had stripped themselves naked of the divine glory when they put gratifying their own desires before obedience to God.  In baptism, we receive the robe of light they rejected as we put on Christ like a garment, but still we refuse to live each day as those who have been restored to such great dignity as the beloved children of God.  The father had the fatted calf slain for a great celebration.  Like the confused Gentile converts of Corinth whom St. Paul had to remind about the holiness of their bodies, we must remember that “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.  Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Cor. 5: 7-8) In the banquet of the Eucharist, we already participate mystically in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, being nourished by His own Body and Blood.  Yet we all fall short of our calling to live each day in communion with Christ as members of His own Body, the Church.  Like the prodigal son, we so often think, speak, and act as isolated, anonymous individuals enslaved to the self-centered desires that have taken our hearts captive.  No matter how appealing or noble we find the objects of our desires to be, we obscure the distinctive beauty of our souls when we act more like bundles of inflamed passion than as beloved children of our Father.   

 As we prepare to follow our Lord back to Paradise through to His Cross and empty tomb, we must recognize like the prodigal son that we have exiled ourselves and then begin the long journey home.  Like him, we must not allow the fear of rejection to deter us.  Like the father in the parable, God is not a vengeful tyrant set on retribution.  “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8) and constantly reaches out to us, calling us to accept restoration as His sons and daughters. All He asks is that we repent by reorienting the course of our lives toward the blessedness of His Heavenly Kingdom.  With King David, we must pray, “Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to Your mercy remember me, for Your goodness’ sake, O Lord.” (Ps. 24) “A contrite and humble heart, O God, You will not despise.” (Ps. 50) We must mindfully refuse to allow the hurt pride called shame keep us from returning to our true home. Now is the time to leave behind the filth and misery of the pig pen and to enter by grace into the joy of a heavenly banquet that none of us deserves.   Now is the time to end our self-imposed exile and direct our steps to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, our true home.

 

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“God Resists the Proud, But Gives Grace to the Humble”: Homily for the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Timothy 3:10-15; Luke 18:10-14

 

Today we begin the Lenten Triodion, the three-week period of preparation for the spiritual journey that prepares us to follow Christ to His Cross and victory over death at Pascha. The first step in our preparation is to remember that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (Jas. 4:6) Today the Church reminds us of how easy it is to distort the spiritual disciplines of Lent in a fashion that makes them nothing but hindrances to the healing of our souls.  Today we are warned that it is entirely possible to distort prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and other spiritual disciplines according to our own pride such that these tools of salvation become nothing but instruments for rejecting the healing mercy of the Savior. 

 Contrary to what we would like to believe, embracing these practices with integrity is not a way to impress God, ourselves, or our neighbors.  It is not a way of accomplishing anything at all by conventional human standards.  Pursuing spiritual disciplines does not in any way justify us in having any negative opinion whatsoever about anyone else.  Far from exalting ourselves, our most feeble attempts at purifying the desires of our hearts will quickly reveal the weakness of our souls. At the very least, they will bring to the surface how disinclined we are to be fully present to God, how addicted we are to satisfying our various appetites, and how much more we care for our own possessions and comfort than for the wellbeing of our neighbors.  We will then face the choice of how to respond to these challenging revelations.  If we want to pursue Lent for the healing of our souls, we must refuse to fall prey to the common temptation to turn our disciplines into ways of blinding ourselves from the truth about where stand before the Lord, as did the Pharisee in today’s gospel reading. 

 The Pharisees were experts in the Old Testament law, which they interpreted very strictly in terms of outward behavior.  The Pharisee was correct to fast, tithe, pray, and live a morally upright life.  The problem is that he did so in ways that served his pride to the point of grave spiritual blindness. Instead of pursuing these disciplines in humility so that he would gain the spiritual clarity to see himself truthfully before God, he used them as justification to condemn a neighbor.  Doing so revealed only his own sinfulness.  We can easily fall into the same trap this Lent, for there is a strong temptation to ignore the brokenness of our own souls as we obsess about the apparent failings of others.  As those who confess that we are each “the chief of sinners” before receiving Communion, we must focus on our own need for the Lord’s healing mercy and refuse to become the self-appointed judges of our neighbors. When we embrace such proud delusions, it becomes impossible for us to follow our Lord to His Passion in a true spiritual sense. Doing so amounts to refusing to receive His grace, for we will then be so full of pride that we will imagine we have already reached the heights of holiness by our own accomplishments.   Even as we think that we are models of righteousness, we will worship only ourselves as we deny our need for the Savior’s victory over death.  Like the Pharisee, we will use the word “God,” but in reality we will pray only to ourselves as we wander ever deeper into spiritual blindness. 

 The more we devote ourselves to spiritual disciplines, the greater the temptation will likely be to focus on the apparent failings of others in order to distract ourselves from the struggle to become fully present to God, stripped naked of all our pretensions and usual efforts of self-justification.  We need profound humility to become fully present to the One Who is “Holy, Holy, Holy” as we “lay aside all earthly cares” to focus on the one thing needful.  When even a glimmer of the brilliant light of the Divine Glory begins to shine through the eyes of our souls, the darkness within us becomes obvious. The temptation is strong to shift our attention to whatever we think will hide us from that kind of spiritual vulnerability. 

 The Publican was an easy target for the Pharisee, for tax collectors were Jews who collected money from their own people to fund the Roman army of occupation.  Like Zacchaeus, they collected more than was required and lived off the difference. The Pharisee believed that he was justified in looking down on someone who was both a traitor and a thief, even as we typically think that we are justified in condemning those we love to hate.   Ironically, this tax collector would not have denied the charge. He knew he was a wretched sinner, and his only apparent virtue was that he knew he had none.  Standing off by himself in the temple, the man would “not even lift up his eyes to Heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner.’”

            Despite his miserable way of life, the tax collector somehow mustered the spiritual strength to do something the Pharisee could not:  He exposed his soul to the blinding light of God from the depths of his heart without trying to distract himself from the truth.  Christ said that the Publican, not the Pharisee, went home justified that day.  That was not because he had done more good deeds, obeyed more laws, or been more conventionally religious or moral, but because he had the humility to encounter God honestly as the sinner that he was.  Such humility is absolutely essential for opening our souls to the healing mercy of Christ.   Without it, pride will destroy the virtue of everything that we do and plunge us into even greater spiritual darkness and delusion.  But with it, there is hope for us all to receive the healing mercy of the Lord.

There is surely no greater sign of the folly of exalting ourselves and condemning others in the name of religion than the Passion of Christ.  Highly religious people like Pharisees and chief priests rejected Him and called for His crucifixion because they had blinded themselves spiritually with their pride and lust for power.  It was not the tax collectors and other public sinners who wanted Him dead, but those who were so self-righteous that they could accept only a Messiah who confirmed that they were deserving of glory and praise.  They defined themselves as holy over against “the sinners,” even though they were the guiltiest of all due to their pride.  Had they come to recognize that and cry out to the Lord from the depths of their hearts for mercy like the publican, they surely would have received it.

There is no clearer warning to us about the dangers of pride corrupting our Lenten disciplines than today’s gospel reading.  The point is not, of course, that we should all become public criminals, but that we must use our ascetical practices to grow in our humility as those who know only our need for the healing mercy of the One Who offered Himself fully on the Cross and rose in glory for our salvation.  Whenever we catch ourselves thinking that at least we are better than that person or group of people, we must focus our minds on the words of the Jesus Prayer or otherwise call out to the Lord from our hearts “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”  If we have identified some earthly agenda with God’s Kingdom such that we exalt ourselves in our own minds over adherents of competing agendas, we must likewise fall on our faces in humility. We must embrace such spiritual clarity not only with our rational minds, but also with our hearts this Lent. As the Savior said, “He who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”  Now is the time to prepare for a spiritually beneficial Lent that will help us grow in the humility necessary to see ourselves clearly as we reorient our lives toward the great joy of Pascha, for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

 

 

Holiness Requires Humility and Persistence: Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost & Seventeenth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Corinthians 6:16-7:1; Matthew 15:21-28

 Unless we are very careful, it is easy to fall prey to the temptation of defining holiness in ways that serve our preconceived notions, which may have very little to do with finding the healing of our souls by sharing more fully in the life of the Savior by grace.  We often see righteousness through the lens of our own sensibilities about worldly divisions and disputes in ways that have more to do with serving our own passions than with serving the Lord.  Today’s Scripture readings challenge us to wake up from such delusions and to see ourselves clearly before His infinite holiness.   

In order to understanding these readings, we must remember that as Gentiles we would be complete strangers to the promises to Abraham apart from the coming of Christ.  It is only by faith in Him, as the One Who fulfills those promises, that we are now heirs to the great spiritual heritage of the Hebrews.  We read today about a Gentile woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon who wanted the Lord to cast a demon out of her daughter.  She was likely of higher social class than were the Jews of the area and there was a history of severe tension between these groups.   That surely colored the scene when this Canaanite woman called on the Jewish Messiah as “Son of David” to deliver her daughter.  At first, He did not answer her at all.  Then the disciples made the situation even more tense by begging Him to send her away.  That is when the Savior said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  Then she knelt before Him and simply said, “Lord, help me.”  Christ then put her to the test by saying, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”  As a pagan, she and her people were thought by the Jews to be as unclean as dogs and spiritually inferior.  The Lord spoke to her in terms that pressed the point of her presumed vast distance from the God of Israel as a Gentile.  The same thing, of course, would have been presumed about us and our ancestors. 

 With those stinging words, He challenged her to state a revolutionary theological truth that hardly anyone else at the time understood.   She responded with these words: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”  With that statement, she acknowledged that, if God’s blessings applied only to those of Hebrew heritage, she had no more claim on them than dogs had to the food of their owner. Nonetheless, even they could lick up the crumbs that fell from the table.  This Gentile woman knew better than our Lord’s disciples that the ancient promises to Abraham were ultimately for the salvation of all.  The Lord then praised her great faith and healed her daughter.  He had spoken harshly to her in order to challenge her to see and articulate the shocking truth that His salvation extended even to Gentiles with humble faith in Him.  That was not only for her benefit, but also for His disciples, who needed to see that His salvation extended even to a hated foreigner and includes people like you and me.

 The church in Corinth was composed primarily of Gentiles like this woman.  St. Paul’s correspondence with them is filled with admonitions to stop living like pagans and embrace their identity as God’s temple, the Body of Christ.   He had to address matters including: political divisions within the church; members suing one another; tolerance of incest; men having relations with prostitutes in pagan temples; abuses in the celebration of Communion; arguments over which spiritual gifts were most important; and denial of our hope for bodily resurrection.  The Corinthians were in a complete mess, hardly being a shining example of holiness.  If you ever wondered why there were spirited debates about what to require of Gentiles who became Christians in the first century, the problems in Corinth are your answer.  Even when the apostles decided not to require circumcision and obedience to dietary and other Old Testament laws, they did insist that Gentile converts abandon sexual immorality and any involvement with the worship of idols.

 It is in this very broken context of a compromised Gentile Christian community that St. Paul reminds his readers that they “are the temple of the living God.”  Despite their many failings, he calls them to embrace their identity in fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy: “[A]s God said, ‘I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from them, and be separate from them…and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters…’” Pointing to this foundational point of their identity, St. Paul declares that “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”

 Christ did not require the Canaanite woman to convert to Judaism as a condition for delivering her daughter.  We know nothing about this woman’s life, but as a Gentile she may well have participated in rituals and behaviors of the sort that corrupted the Corinthians.  The Lord’s mercy to her was not something that she had earned by following religious laws.  She was able to receive His mercy because of her humility, which enabled her to confess the truth about where she stood before the Lord.  She offered herself fully and without excuse, kneeling in humility before a Jew and pleading for the blessings of the one true God, which was a completely absurd thing to do according to all the common assumptions of that time and place.  That is how her spiritual vision was clarified to the point that she knew the truth about how our Lord’s mercy extends to all with faith in Him, even the despised Gentiles.  She is a very different character from St. Symeon, but like him she recognized that Christ is the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.” 

 Likewise, the mercy of the Lord is so great that He enabled even the notoriously confused Gentile Christians of Corinth to become “the temple of the living God.”  Their ancestry and imperfection were not the point; what was important is that they had received Christ in faith, putting Him on like a garment in baptism.  Likewise, whatever heritage or culture we claim, whatever struggles and failures we have had, whatever wounds we bear, however our hearts are broken for those we have wronged or for the suffering of our loved ones, we must remember our true identity in Christ and “cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”  Forgetting the past, we must focus on doing what we can today to live as God’s holy temple as we offer ourselves, especially the weak and distorted dimensions of our lives, in humility for Christ’s healing. 

 To do so does not mean feeling sorry for ourselves or becoming paralyzed by hurt pride when we confront how we have fallen short, whether in the past or today.  It does not mean despairing of healing in the future.  It does not mean giving up when we fail to resist any temptation or when we do not seem to be progressing on a schedule that we have set.  It means instead that, as we come to see with a measure of clarity where we stand before the Lord, we refuse to stop calling for His mercy from the depths of our hearts as we undertake the daily struggle to turn away from sin and share more fully in His salvation.  It means that we let nothing keep us from embracing our true identity as God’s temple, as members of Christ’s Body.  In Him, we are no   longer strangers and foreigners but beloved sons and daughters of God called to “make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”  Let us live accordingly.

 

If We Do Not Invest Ourselves In the Life of the Kingdom, We Risk Losing Our Souls: Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost & Sixteenth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Corinthians 6:1-10; Matthew 25:14-30

          It is easy to overlook how often the Lord used money and possessions to convey a spiritual message.  Perhaps that is because almost everyone struggles with being overly attached to material things, for they can meet our basic physical needs and provide comfort and a sense of security.  Due to our self-centered desires, however, they so easily become false gods as we make them the measure of our lives.  As Christ taught, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also….You cannot serve both God and mammon.” (Matt. 6: 21, 24)

Today’s gospel reading uses precisely such imagery.   Three servants received large sums of money, called talents, from their master when he went away on a long journey.   He was a shrewd businessman and expected them to make the most of what he had entrusted to them.  One invested so wisely that his five talents turned into ten.  The one given two talents did the same and earned two more.  They both doubled their money and earned the praise of their master when he returned.  But the third servant, who had only one talent to invest, was not such a good steward.  Out of fear that he might lose what little he had, he simply buried the money in the ground and produced nothing at all. The master scolded him for not even putting the money in the bank and earning interest.  Then he took away his talent and gave it to the first servant. Near the end of the parable, we read that “to everyone who has, more will be given and he will have abundance, but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.”

The Lord used this story about investing money as a way to convey the importance of being a faithful steward of all our blessings.  Life itself and all our abilities and possessions come from the Lord.  Ever since He created us in His image and likeness, He has called us to invest ourselves in ways that enable us to flourish as His sons and daughters as we share more fully in His life. He calls us to an abundant life that bears fruit for the Kingdom, blesses others, and radiates the light of holiness throughout the world.

Before such a high calling, we may feel as inadequate as the servant who buried his one talent in the ground out of fear.  Like him, we do not want to lose what we have, and it is usually less stressful to guard against loss than to take the risk of investing for gain.  So we choose to remain as we have been, perhaps thinking that whatever we do will never amount to much anyway.  Maybe we imagine that only people whose circumstances and experiences are not as broken as our own could ever really invest themselves in the service of the Kingdom in ways that would bear good fruit.  Perhaps we have tried and failed so many times that we have given up. 

If we see ourselves in the cowardly servant who buried his one talent in the ground, we must recognize that what he did led to the very opposite of what he had hope for.  He brought only further weakness and loss upon himself, losing even the one talent and being cast out into the darkness.  A person who is unable to move physically for a long period of time loses muscle mass and strength, knowing only greater weakness and pain.  The same is true of our life in Christ.  Trying to play it safe by being spiritually stagnant never works.  If we are not actively offering our gifts and abilities to the Lord, we will diminish ourselves to the point that we lose what little spiritual strength we had.

What St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians in today’s epistle reading applies to each of us, regardless of whether we have one or ten talents, regardless of whether we think that our present situation is especially conducive to becoming a channel of blessing to anybody.  As St. Paul put it, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2) If we are going to be faithful stewards, we have to begin with our lives as they are now.  To wait until all problems have been resolved and we have time, energy, and resources to spare is to accept an illusion, for our lives will never be without challenges.  Cowardly servants will always find reasons to be afraid and to bury their talents in the ground.  The more that we weaken ourselves by doing that, the harder it will be ever to invest ourselves in ways that bear fruit for the Kingdom.  It is nothing but a lie and a delusion to think otherwise.

St. Paul endured beatings, imprisonment, attempts on his life, shipwreck, and so many other difficulties before he died as a martyr.  He did not wait until life was completely peaceful and calm before serving God and blessing his neighbors.  He describes the life of the apostles “as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” (2 Cor. 6:10)

Though the details are different, our calling is ultimately the same as his.  No matter how sad, sick, frustrated, deprived, or conflicted we may be, the Lord calls us all to invest our lives in the service of His Kingdom.  We will not do that with the prominence of St. Paul, but that is beside the point.  The servant with only one talent was still called to be as faithful with what he had as the one who had ten.  Like it or not, we have the lives in this world that we have and we can change nothing about the past.  What we can do is to refuse to be paralyzed by fear and insecurity as we offer ourselves to become more faithful stewards of God’s blessings. 

We must never diminish the importance of even the seemingly smallest investments of ourselves that we make for the Kingdom.  Everyone can devote a few minutes daily to cultivating the habits of prayer and reading the Scriptures.  By taking even small steps to follow the fasting guidelines of the Church or to endure illness or other difficult trials patiently, we can all embrace self-denial in ways appropriate to our spiritual health and life circumstances.  Everyone has opportunities to refuse to harbor hateful thoughts about their enemies and to pray for them.  Our lives are filled with opportunities to repent as we purify the desires of our hearts and reorient ourselves toward the love of God and neighbor.

We should never refuse to do what we can today to become better stewards of our talents because they seem so small or because we have failed to do so in the past.  As the parable shows, the way to gain greater spiritual strength is to be “faithful over a little,” making the most of what God has entrusted to us.  As St. Paul wrote, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”  No matter what we think of our gifts and limitations, we all face the same question of whether we are going to offer ourselves as best we can for growth in union with the Lord, becoming like the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  They do not look like much on their own, but when transformed by the Holy Spirit they become the Body and Blood of Christ, our true participation in the Heavenly Banquet.

We do not have to be spiritual superheroes in order be faithful stewards of our talents and play our role in fulfilling God’s purposes for the world.  We simply have to offer in obedience what only we can offer to the Lord—namely, ourselves-- and let Him do the rest.  Then we will receive back infinitely more than what we had offered in the first place.  And our life in this world, no matter how humble, will then produce fruit for the Kingdom even “thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.” (Mark 4:8) Surely, there is no better investment than that.

 

 

 

 

Offering Ourselves to God and Neighbor like Zacchaeus: Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday of Luke and After-feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Timothy 4:9-15; Luke 19:1-10

Today we continue to celebrate the Presentation of Christ, forty days after His birth, in the Temple in Jerusalem.  The Theotokos and St. Joseph bring the young Savior there in compliance with the Old Testament law, making the offering of a poor family, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.  By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the old man St. Simeon proclaims that this Child is the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.”  The aged prophetess St. Anna also recognizes Him as the fulfillment of God’s promises. 

Even as we celebrate His appearance in the Temple, which is recognized by these great saints, we also remember today a very different type of appearance and recognition in Zacchaeus’ encounter with Christ.  Zacchaeus had not lived at all like these righteous elders, for he was a Jew who had become rich collecting taxes for the Romans from his own people.  He was both a professional traitor and a thief who collected more than was required in order to live in luxury. No one in that time and place would have expected the Messiah to appear to such a man or for Zacchaeus to have responded to Him as he did. 

We really do not know why Zacchaeus wanted to see the Savior as He passed by.  He was a short little fellow who could not see over the crowd, so he climbed a sycamore tree in order to get a better view.  That must have looked very strange:  a hated tax-collector up in a tree so that he could see a passing rabbi.  Even more surprising was the Lord’s response when He saw him: “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”  The One Who was presented and recognized in the Temple as a forty-day-old Infant now enters into the home of a public sinner, where the tax-collector received Him joyfully, as had Sts. Simeon and Anna many years earlier.   

This outrageous scene shocked people, for no Jew with any integrity, and especially not the Messiah, would appear in the home of such a traitor and thief.  He risked identifying Himself with Zacchaeus’s corruption by going into his house and presumably eating with him.  But before the Savior said anything to the critics, the tax collector did something unbelievable.  He actually repented.  He confessed the truth about himself as a criminal exploiter of his neighbors and pledged to give half of his possessions to the poor and to restore four-fold what he had stolen from others.  He committed himself to do more than justice required in making right the wrongs he had committed.   In that astounding moment, this notorious sinner did what was necessary to reorient his life away from greedy self-centeredness and toward selfless generosity to his neighbors.  As a sign of His great mercy, Jesus Christ accepted Zacchaeus’ sincere repentance, proclaiming that salvation has come to this son of Abraham, for He came to seek and to save the lost as the Savior “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.” 

The overwhelming transformative grace of God shines through this memorable story.  We do not know Zacchaeus’s reasons for wanting to see the Lord so much that he climbed up a tree, but he somehow opened himself to receive the healing divine energies of the Lord as he did so. Christ did not have to condemn Zacchaeus, whose spiritual vision had been clarified enough to know that his life was full of darkness.  He instead took the initiative to establish a healing relationship with someone considered a lost cause by all conventional standards. When people complained that He had associated Himself with such a sinner, He did not argue with them, but instead let Zacchaeus use that tense moment to bear witness to his gracious healing by giving half of what he owned to the poor and restoring all that he had stolen four-fold. 

Zacchaeus was so transformed by Christ’s appearance in his life that he became a brilliant epiphany of His salvation. He became a living witness that Christ is truly the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.”  In the coming weeks as we prepare for Great Lent, we will recall how the Lord’s mercy extended to others who were thought at the time to be cut off from God.  For example, Christ’s mercy reached even the demon-possessed daughter of the Canaanite woman, who—like Simeon—understood that His gracious healing extended also to Gentiles.  Not the proud and self-righteous Pharisee, but the humble publican who knew his sinfulness went back to his house from the Temple justified.  The astonishing mercy of the father in welcoming home the prodigal son shows that the Lord restores even those who have lived such disreputable lives that they end up completely miserable in pig pens.  And in our pre-Communion prayers, we remember also the penitent thief on the cross to whom the Lord promised Paradise in response to his simple plea, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.” (Lk. 23:42)  

            Even as we continue to celebrate His Presentation in the Temple and recognition by Sts. Simeon and Anna, we must never think that the brilliant light of Christ appears only within buildings set apart for religious services or in the hearts of people who are known to be especially righteous. Indeed, His Presentation reveals that He is the Savior of all, including those thought to be strangers and foreigners from His Kingdom. Of course, that includes us.  As St. Paul wrote to the Gentile Christians of Ephesus, “you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” (Eph. 2:19-21)

            The Temple in Jerusalem, which the Lord entered as an Infant, foreshadowed the true Temple of the Kingdom of Heaven.  As we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Christ is the true “High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man.” (Heb. 8: 1-2) “Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.” (Heb. 9:12) As members of His Body, the Church, we participate already in the life and worship of heaven, especially in the Divine Liturgy.  As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?...For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.” (1 Cor. 3:16-17)  

            We cannot truly celebrate this feast without uniting ourselves more fully to our Great High Priest, which means offering every dimension of our lives for greater participation even now in the life of the Kingdom of heaven.  Zacchaeus shows us how to do that, for He responded to Christ’s appearance in His life with extravagant generosity as he gave back far more than he had stolen.  He later ministered with the apostles and ultimately became the bishop of Caesarea in Palestine. He went from making his life a temple to the love of money to a true temple of the Lord.  We must follow Zacchaeus’ example by taking tangible steps in our daily lives to offer ourselves more fully to Christ and to our neighbors, even as we resist the temptation to think that anyone is beyond receiving His salvation.  We must live as the holy Temple we are as members of the Body of Christ, our Great High Priest.  If Zacchaeus can become a saint, then there is hope for us all in Jesus Christ, Who is truly the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

It Is Only Because of the Light that We Can See the Darkness: Homily for the Thirty-first Sunday After Pentecost & Fourteenth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Timothy 1:15-17; Luke 18:35-43

 

We remain in a period of preparation to behold Christ at His appearing.  The One born at Christmas and baptized at Theophany is brought by the Theotokos and St. Joseph the Betrothed to the Temple in Jerusalem as a 40-day old Infant in fulfillment of the Old Testament law, which we will celebrate later this week at the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the old man St. Simeon proclaims that this Child is the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.”  The aged prophetess St. Anna also speaks openly of Him as the Savior.   At the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, we celebrate the appearance of the Lord Who fulfills the ancient promises to Abraham and extends them to all with faith in Him.  By His appearance, He has enlightened the whole creation. Christ is “the true light which gives light to everyone coming into the world.” (Jn. 1:9) 

 If we have any level of spiritual integrity and insight, however, we will recognize how far we are from having the clarified spiritual vision necessary to behold the glory of the Lord at His appearance.  Despite our celebration of these great feasts, we remain very much like the blind beggar in need of the Lord’s healing mercy for the restoration of our sight.  That may seem odd, for we are illumined in baptism, filled with the Holy Spirit at Chrismation, and nourished by Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist.  As we sing after receiving Communion, “We have seen the true Light.  We have received the Heavenly Spirit.  We have found the true Faith, worshiping the Undivided Trinity Who hath saved us.”   Yes, the eyes of our souls have been cleansed, but not to the point that we are fully transparent to the brilliant light of Christ.

 St. Paul wrote, “For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4: 6) The Apostle gained the spiritual vision to see himself, as he wrote in today’s epistle reading, as “the foremost of sinners.”  We quote him in confessing that we are each “the chief” of sinners in our pre-Communion prayers.  To pray those words with integrity is a clear sign that Christ is enlightening our hearts, for otherwise we would remain in the utter blindness of thinking that we are justified in self-righteously exalting ourselves before God and over other people.  St. Paul had the vision to do precisely the opposite when he wrote that “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience for an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life.”  In other words, Paul knew that if the divine mercy could extend even to a miserable sinner like him, then there is hope for everyone in Christ Jesus.  That is precisely the kind of humility that even the smallest ray of spiritual light should inspire in our souls.

 If we have truly embraced the Lord’s mercy with the humility of the chief of sinners, then He has already corrected our spiritual vision to the point that we can catch at least a glimpse of how infinitely beyond us the fullness of His eternal glory remains.  That is why we are able to see, at least partially, how much darkness remains within us and how far we are from fulfilling the Lord’s command: “You shall be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48) He also taught: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt. 5:8) If we are not completely blind spiritually, hearing these words will inspire us to call out with the humble persistence of the blind beggar for mercy that will further restore and perfect our sight.   

 The blind beggar is a model for us in many ways in how to gain spiritual clarity.  First, he neither denied nor embraced his inability to see.  He did not accept some kind of fantasy that distracted him from facing the truth about his situation.  He did not somehow convince himself that the best he could do was to make the most of being a blind beggar.  He knew that he could not see and desperately wanted healing.  Is the same true of us?  Have we become so comfortable with our darkened spiritual sight that we do not long to become radiant with the brilliant light of our Lord, sharing as fully as possible in His blessed eternal life?  Have we become content with a faith that is little more than an assortment of religious ideas and practices that we use to distract ourselves from confronting where we truly stand before God and in relation to our neighbors?  If we are honest, we will answer those questions not according to our passions but in light of our Lord’s infinite holiness, for we must all engage in the perpetual spiritual struggle of opening our darkened souls more fully to the light of Christ.  We have all become too comfortable with the darkness with us; to the extent that we recognize that, it is because we have opened the eyes of our souls to receive at least a small measure of the light of our Lord. 

 The blind beggar is also a model for us because he called out to Christ when he did not fully understand who He was.  The beggar used a very Jewish term for the Messiah, “Son of David,” when he asked for mercy.  Like everyone else who was waiting for the Messiah or “anointed one” at that time, the beggar surely thought of Christ as merely an especially righteous human being who would bless the Jews by healing the sick, casting out demons, teaching strict obedience to the Old Testament law, and delivering Israel from occupation by the Roman Empire.  They wanted a new King David, not One Who appeared truly as the Son of God Who would conquer death through His cross and empty tomb.  The Savior did not, however, reject the blind man’s request due to this lack of full understanding.  Instead, the Lord graciously restored the man’s sight because he had faith that He could heal him.  Likewise, we must not be discouraged from persistently calling out to Christ due to our imperfect faith or knowledge. Uniting ourselves fully to Him is an infinite vocation that none of us has completed.  We may face deep struggles in entrusting our most painful wounds and weaknesses to the Savior for healing.  We may wrestle with doubt almost to the point of despair.  God may seem distant from the challenges that break our hearts.  Like that blind beggar, however, we must refuse to be denied, cultivating the trust to call for the Lord’s mercy from the depths of our hearts in some form of the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  If we can pray that prayer with any measure of spiritual integrity, even with faith the size of a mustard seed, that is because His light is already shining in our hearts.  The way to grow in faith is to cultivate and magnify that light, which we do by offering even our deepest pains and darkest fears to Christ through prayer from the depths of our hearts, especially when we are sorely tempted not to. Let us do so with simple trust that, as St. Paul wrote, “’whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’” (Rom. 10:13)   

 There is simply no way for us to gain the spiritual vision to behold and know Christ more fully than to embrace the daily spiritual struggle to share personally in His healing and fulfillment of the human person in the image and likeness of God.  When we stumble in doing so, let us use our fall to grow in humility and sense of dependence upon His grace.  There is no way to open the eyes of our souls to His brilliant light without calling persistently from the depths of our hearts for His mercy.  That is precisely the humility that attracts the grace without which we would be completely blind.  That is precisely the humility that we see in St. Paul, who knew himself to be the chief of sinners.  That is precisely the humility that we see in the blind beggar, who refused to stop calling out for the Lord’s healing mercy.  And it must be the humility that becomes characteristic of us as those who recognize the 40-day old Christ at His Presentation in the Temple as the Savior “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.”   He alone can overcome the darkness that remains within us.

 

 

 

Obedience and Gratitude: Homily for the Twenty-ninth Sunday after Pentecost & Twelfth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Colossians 3:4-11; Luke 17:12-19

 

            During the season of Christmas, we celebrated the Nativity in the flesh of the Savior.  Born as truly one of us, He is the New Adam Who restores and fulfills us as living icons of God.  During the season of Theophany, we celebrated the revelation of His divinity as a Person of the Holy Trinity at His baptism, where the voice of the Father identified Him as the Son and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove.  Christ has appeared in the waters of the Jordan, blessing the entire creation, enabling all things to become radiant with the divine glory.  When we put Him on like a garment in baptism, we participate in the sanctification that He has brought to the world as we regain the “robe of light” repudiated by our first parents. 

             We must never think of our Lord’s birth or baptism, or of our own baptism, as somehow the end of the story.  Saint Paul wrote that, “when Christ, Who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”  As we confess in the Nicene Creed, there is a future dimension of Christ’s appearance, for He “will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, Whose kingdom will have no end.”  We “look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”  When Christ returns in brilliant glory, the true state of our souls will be revealed.  The Last Judgment will be the ultimate epiphany or manifestation of whether we have embraced His healing and become radiant with His gracious divine energies.  It will be impossible to hide or obscure on that day who we have become.

             To shine eternally with the light of Christ requires that we undertake the daily struggle to purify and reorient the desires of our hearts toward fulfillment in God and away from slavery to our passions.  The Colossians to whom Paul wrote were mostly Gentile converts who needed to be reminded that they had repudiated corrupt pagan practices and put on Christ in baptism.  That is why Paul told them to “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”  It is contradictory to unite oneself to Christ and then to refuse to conform our character to His.  In order to have spiritual integrity, we must continue to repudiate all that keeps us from becoming living epiphanies of our Lord’s salvation. As Paul notes, “anger, wrath, malice, slander…foul talk” and lying should have no place in our lives, for in baptism we have “put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.”

            As those who live in hope for the coming of the Kingdom, we must struggle every day of our lives to enter more fully into Christ’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person in the image and likeness of God.  There is no other way to appear with Him in glory, whether today or when His Kingdom comes in its fullness.  And the merely human distinctions that we so often celebrate due to our passions and insecurities have nothing to do with sharing in the life of our Lord, for as Paul wrote, “Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all.” 

        Today’s gospel reading provides a shocking example of this truth, for the Lord’s healing mercy extended even to a Samaritan with leprosy.  Among the ten lepers the Lord healed, the only one who returned to thank Him was a hated Samaritan, someone considered a foreigner and a heretic by the Jews.  After the man fell down before Him in gratitude, the Lord said, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”  Our Lord’s gracious interaction with this man shows that His therapeutic ministry extended even to those conventionally understood to be outsiders, sinners, and enemies.  The Lord’s love for humanity transcends all political and personal boundaries, and we must not pretend that His benevolence somehow does not extend to those we consider our enemies for whatever reason.  Doing so will reveal only how very far we are from becoming living epiphanies of His salvation.    

         Remember that our Savior praised the faith of a Roman centurion, who was an officer of the Roman army that occupied Israel.  By any conventional standard, that man was His enemy.  (Lk 7:9) The people of Nazareth tried to throw Christ off a cliff when He reminded them that God had at times blessed Gentiles through the ministry of great Hebrew prophets and had not helped Jews.  (Lk 4:29) He shocked everyone by talking with St. Photini, the Samaritan woman at the well, and then spending a few days in her village.  (Jn 4:40) The list could go on, but the point is obvious that our Lord’s love for broken, suffering humanity extends literally to all who bear the divine image and likeness.  He was born and baptized in order to bring all people into the Holy Trinity’s eternal communion of love.  It is only “the old nature” of corruption that would keep us so enslaved to hatred, division, and vengeance that we would imagine that those we consider our enemies are any less called to become brilliant epiphanies of salvation than we are.   

Perhaps the Samaritan returned to give thanks because he had never expected to find healing from the Jewish Messiah.  He knew that, in the eyes of the Jews, he was considered sinful and an outcast.  Nonetheless, he obeyed the Lord’s command to head toward the temple in Jerusalem to show himself to the priests.  That must have been a very difficult instruction for a Samaritan to obey, for the Samaritan temple was not in Jerusalem, but on Mount Gerizim.  The Jewish temple was no place for a Samaritan; he surely would not have been welcome there.  Nonetheless, he set out toward Jerusalem with the other lepers.  When he realized that he had been healed, he was the only one to return to thank the Savior for this life-changing miracle.

             This man did not have the pride of someone who expected everything to go his way because of his heritage or personal accomplishments. He could take nothing for granted and was profoundly thankful for a blessing he had never expected.  He was truly humble and thus had the spiritual clarity to see that the only appropriate response to his healing was to fall down before Christ in gratitude.  That is how he showed the faith that made him well.

             We can all follow his example by both obeying the Lord’s commandments and cultivating a deep sense of gratitude.  The Samaritan did what Christ told him to do and, when he saw that he was healed, remembered to thank Him.  We must struggle to repudiate the ways in which we fall short of our high calling to manifest His glory.  When we find the strength to do so, even in small and imperfect ways, we must not thank ourselves but the One Who heals us by His grace.  We must not pretend that we have accomplished something by our own power, but must cultivate gratitude as we continue the journey to share more fully in His life.   The more that we enter into the brilliant light of Christ, the more the darkness within us will become apparent.  Instead of despairing or distracting ourselves by judging others, let us embrace the struggle each day of our lives to find healing from our passions as we embrace more fully our true identity in Christ, becoming evermore brilliant epiphanies of His salvation.  Let us prepare to “appear with him in glory” through obedience and gratitude, for that is the only way to follow the example of the Samaritan, whose faith made him well.